Avi Arad Says More Video Game Movies On The Way

Take this how you will, but as far as I’m concerned there is no such thing as a good video game movie. Thanks to one Uwe Boll, my opinion is one many gamers share (and movie goers for that matter), our dreams shattered time and time again by less then awful live action versions of some of our favorite video games.

Ah but there is a glimmer of hope.

Ari Arad said at the Milken Institute Global Conference:

“Very much like when we started with comics, we need one runaway success to make it very clear that this is a great source material.”

In just a month we’ll all be sitting in our local theater seeing what Jerry Bruckheimer can do with Prince of Persia. Could this be the “runaway hit” that the video game adaptation movement needs? Will it persuade producers to start approving the huge budgets needed to recreate a video game in the movie theater? I guess that will be up to audiences soon enough. However, it does seem to be doing the things right like having a credible director and producer on board as well as using the same writer who wrote the games.

I’d just like to take a moment and reflect on the possibility of a Mass Effect movie…

This is what the marriage between movies and games needs though! People who are passionate about it and people who are willing to treat it like an art form and not just a cash grab; thinking that us mindless gamers will only care about the next big explosion. However, what these studios have to realize is that games today, a lot of the time, have better story telling and character development than movies. Look at Mass Effect or Heavy Rain if you would think otherwise.

Okay, given the spotty history between games and movies, do you think there will be more game-based movies made in the future? Does that make you excited or wary?

Side Note: Now if only the movie-based video game would take it up a notch. Though I don’t know if that will ever happen, I mean look at Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands. Ubisoft made the series and it still looks like a shitty movie tie in game!